Video: Creating and applying keywords to images

Keywords are another type of metadata that can help you find the images that you want to work with. Depending on the types of projects you work on, you may decide to add several keywords per image or you might only need one or two. For example, a photographer who's shooting stock will want to add a lot of keywords to their images, so that other people can search on those keywords to find the images. Whereas a portrait photographer might only add the client name and the type of session such as an engagement session to their keywords. In order to make sure that we're all viewing the same work space, let's click where it says Essentials at the top and then use the drop down menu to reset the work space. Now, I don't need to see the preview, so I'll double click on the Preview tab in order to collapse it.

Learning how to use Adobe Photoshop efficiently and effectively is the best way to get the most out of your pixels and create stunning imagery. Master the fundamentals of this program with Julieanne Kost, and discover how to achieve the results you want with Photoshop and its companion programs, Bridge and Camera Raw. This comprehensive course covers nondestructive editing techniques using layers, masking, adjustment layers, blend modes, and Smart Objects. Find out how to perform common editing tasks, including lens correction, cropping and straightening, color and tonal adjustments, noise reduction, shadow and highlight detail recovery, sharpening, and retouching. Julieanne also shows how to achieve more creative effects with filters, layer effects, illustrative type, and the Photomerge command for creating panoramas and composites.

Topics include:

Using Bridge to batch rename files and add keywords and metadata to photos

Viewing, rating, filtering, and creating collections to isolate your best work

Creating and applying keywords to images

Keywords are another type of metadata that can help you find the images that you want to work with. Depending on the types of projects you work on, you may decide to add several keywords per image or you might only need one or two. For example, a photographer who's shooting stock will want to add a lot of keywords to their images, so that other people can search on those keywords to find the images. Whereas a portrait photographer might only add the client name and the type of session such as an engagement session to their keywords. In order to make sure that we're all viewing the same work space, let's click where it says Essentials at the top and then use the drop down menu to reset the work space. Now, I don't need to see the preview, so I'll double click on the Preview tab in order to collapse it.

And I don't need to see file properties, so I'll click on the triangle to collapse that as well. In the IPTC Core area, you can see that I can add a keyword by just clicking to the right of the keyword, but before I add a keyword let's go ahead and select all of my images. So with the first one selected I'll hold down the Shift key and select all of the images. Now I'll add my keyword. In this case I'm just going to add the word Beijing and then I'll click on the check mark in order to add that.

If I want to add keywords to a limited set of images, then all you need to do is select that set and then click again in the keyword area. I'll type a comma in order to separate the keywords and this time I'll type in Forbidden City. (SOUND) Again, I'll click on the check in order to apply that. Then, I'll select the rest of the images here, and we'll add another keyword. In this case, Lama Temple.

Again, I'll click the check mark, but this time when I click the check mark to apply it, if you look in the lower left hand corner you'll notice that Bridge presents an icon to tell me that the information is being embedded in the images. So this is one way that you can apply keywords using the metadata panel. But there's also a keywords panel, so let's deselect all of our images and then click on the keywords panel. Because we don't have any of our images selected, it doesn't look like we've added any keywords.

But if I do select all of my images, you can see that we've added three other keywords. If I want to promote these keywords so that they show up like the other default keywords all I need to do is drag them out of the other keywords area. If I click and drag down and then release my mouse you can see that it's become a keyword that's going to be permanent. Now I can also decide if I want these three keywords to be at the same level or if I want to create a hierarchy.

And there is an advantage to creating a hierarchy. A hierarchy will allow me to apply more than one keyword at a time. So let's go ahead and drag the Forbidden City keyword into the Beijing keyword, and I'll do the same for the Lama Temple. Now, it looks like they've disappeared, but if I use the disclosure triangle, we can see that those keywords are now permanent and they're both sub-keywords of the parent keyword, Beijing. If I want to add aditional keywords in the keyword panel, probably the easiest thing to do is to be certain that I don't have any images selected.

So I'll deselect the images in the content window and then I'll click on the plus icon. Because I have the Bejing keyword selected, when I click the plus icon, it will put it at the same level as Bejing. So, for example, if I type in China. And then, hit the Return key. You can see that, even though it's below Beijing, it's at the same level. It's just below it because it's alphabetical. If I want to make Beijing a sub-keyword of China, all I need to do is drag it on top of the word China, and it will become a sub-keyword.

Now if I wanted to add a keyword, for example, inside the Forbidden City, if I select Forbidden City, instead of clicking on the New Keyword icon, I can click on the New Sub-Keyword icon and you can see that it automatically creates the hierarchy for me. So, in this case, I might want to type in Building. Tap Return and it will go ahead and create that. Now if I wanted to apply the keyword Building to different images, I could select them and then click to the left in the empty box in order to apply them.

Let's do the same for the Lama Temple. I'm going to deselect all of my images in the content area by just clicking in this gray area. Selecting the Lama Temple keyword and then clicking to add a new sub-keyword, in this case I'll add Bridge. Then I'll select my three images and apply the Bridge keyword. And if I decide now that I want to add the China keyword to all of these images, I simply need to select one, hold down the Shift key, select the rest of them. And then click to the left to add the China key word. The thing to be careful of is you need to make sure you have the right images selected before you start adding your keywords.

So it's really up to you whether you want to create a hierarchical keyword list and then apply those keywords to your images or if you simply want to use the metadata panel in order to apply keywords. One of the benefits of using the keyword panel is that these keywords will then remain easily accessible when you move from folder to folder. Because we've made them permanent, because they're no longer just under this other keywords area. And if you don't want these keywords that ship by default all you need to do is select the keyword and then choose Delete in order to remove those.

So let's go ahead and delete all of these. One last shortcut to just mention, even though all of these images already have the China keyword and Beijing keyword assigned to them. If I did want to add for example another keyword and apply the entire keyword hierarchy at once, let's say for example that I want to add Bridge as a keyword. If the Lama Temple and Beijing and China weren't already selected, in fact I can just turn those off for a moment. I just want to show you that if you hold down the Shift key and you click on the keyword Bridge, the shift key enables Bridge the application to assign not only Bridge the keyword but also up the hierarchy to Lama Temple, Beijing, as well as China.

So you can see how easy it is to make keyword categories and keywords, which will make it a lot easier in the future for me to find these images that have these keywords applied.

A: When Creative Cloud applications are updated, we refresh
our training to make sure it covers the latest features and interface changes
from Adobe. This update covers changes to Camera Raw, including nondestructive
cropping, workflow and output settings, and the ability to save multiple files
automatically.

Q: This course was updated on 6/18/2014. What changed?

A: In June 2014 Adobe released new features for Photoshop CC and
added enhancements to several existing features. We added movies to
introduce the new Focus Mask and Blur Gallery features, and changed
several movies to reflect updates to instant type preview, font search,
Typekit, Liquify, Content-Aware Fill, Adobe Camera Raw, and Smart Guides.

Q: This course was updated on 10/06/2014. What changed?

A: We updated this course to reflect the October 2014
changes to Photoshop CC. There are 16 new movies, which are indicated by the
"(CC 2014.1)" tag that appears next to their names.

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